and read a little faster. By the third he could follow Piers at half speed, and Piers had begun to teach him the Ivers signs as well, the private ones, the sign for Mama in a state and the sign for toast and a rude one for Mr. Kinross of Hackney that Theodora pretended not to see.
Then there were mouths. That was harder, and it was Theodora's part, and it was the part she came to dread and to look forward to in equal measure, because it meant sitting very near him at the little round table in the window with the light on her face, and speaking slowly, and being watched. Not looked at; she was used, after three Seasons, to being looked at and passed over. Watched. As if every word she said was worth the trouble of catching.
"P and B and M are the same," she told him. "They all close the lips. You can't tell them apart by looking. You must tell them apart by sense. If I say I have a pear, or a bear, or a mare, you must know from what came before which one is likely. That is the whole secret, really. Half of it is the mouth and half of it is knowing what people are likely to say."
"Most people are likely to say very little."
"That makes it easier, your Grace."
"Geoffrey," he said.
She looked up. He had said it plainly, to her face, as if it were any other word for her to read.
"I can't call you that."
"No, I suppose not. Not in front of your mother. But you could read it, I think. When I say it." He said it again, without sound this time: the G that was nearly nothing, a breath at the back of the throat; the F that put his teeth on his lip. "There. You see. Half of it is the mouth."
"And half of it," said Theodora, with some difficulty, "is knowing what people are likely to say."
He was a good pupil. He was stubborn, and patient with everything except himself, and he had a dry, sideways wit that came out of him unexpectedly, the way water comes out of a rock, so that she would find herself laughing at something before she was quite sure he had meant it to be funny. He told her about the Peninsula, a little, and about horses, a great deal. She told him about Coldharbour, and the nursery floor, and the looking glass. He did not ask what she did on Tuesday and Friday mornings. She thought he must know; Mrs. Bartle had told her he came to Fetter Lane. But he did not ask, and the not asking was a kind of courtesy she had not met before, and it undid her more than any question could have done.